Into the Light: A Grant Ward Story
by skyewardfitzsimmonsphilinda
Summary: Another redemption story, using the events of S2, beginning from S2E1. Redemption wins.
1. Three Words

He sorts through the words crashing through his mind; sorts them one by one by one, and then finds the right ones for the day and holds them in the fists he no longer uses for fighting.

Today: paper, roll, weapon.

Yesterday: Garrett, questions, answer.

There's buzzing in the background, dull and blanketed. He notices—as he's trained to—that the buzzing is people talking, but he can't bring himself to care. You cared about that kind of thing if you were bent on surviving.

He isn't.

Paper, roll, weapon.

It's the guards—three of them, bringing his food—who are talking, he realizes idly.

It doesn't matter.

Paper.

Roll.

Weapon.

The buzzing is louder now—the guards must be upset at something.

It doesn't matter.

Paper. Roll. Weapon.

The blood is seeping out onto the cold pavement, and Grant Ward's wrist feels odd.

It doesn't matter.

Paper. Roll. Weapon.

He wakes in a hospital bed surrounded by armed guards and a man whose face carries so much anger and so much sadness that Grant Ward cannot bear to look at it.

"Why?" Coulson asks, and Grant Ward stares at him.

He hasn't spoken in six months, though he supposes his larynx must be healed by now.

It doesn't matter.

Words are too much, anyway. Speaking. Knowledge. Words.

_Paper. Roll. Weapon. _

"Did you want my attention?" Coulson asks sharply. "Because you've got it, Ward. But not my sympathy."

Ward looks at him strangely.

Sympathy?

The word clatters around in his head, and he tries to focus on the words he held onto before the hospital run. Paper roll weapon paper roll weapon paper—

"We've made sure you won't have access to any more paper," Coulson says, gesturing to the jagged line on Ward's wrist.

Ward's eyes follow Coulson's hand idly, and it's then that Ward realizes his hands are shaking.

"We've made sure there are no more buttons," Coulson continues. "What are you trying to do?"

Trying? To? Do?

Ward stares at him, shakes his head.

(Follow orders?)

(Walk away?)

(Wake up?)

_Nothing, sir. _

It doesn't matter.

"Are you really trying to die?" Coulson asks, and he is right, there is no sympathy in his face, only something hard and fierce that Ward cannot name. "Or are you trying to punish yourself?"

_Well, no one else is here to do it_, he says, laughing, but his lips don't move and his eyes don't spark sarcastically and he lies there, immobile, and stares at Coulson with trembling hands.

"Fine," Coulson says, turning away. "If you don't want to talk, don't. I have interrogators I can send when we need information on Hydra."

He reaches the door, and Ward stares at him, wondering what it was like when Coulson visited a different hospital bed (wondering wondering wondering about a curly-haired scientist whose name he does not think).

What was it like, to be a son and not a prisoner?

_Son._

The word echoes around in his head, dragging up other words and other memories and this is what he fears, this is why he compartmentalizes, this is why he cannot allow himself more than a few words to hold onto in a day—

Coulson is gone, and the guards are telling him to get up, but Ward lies still and silent, his hands shaking as if they will never stop as new words collide and rush over him:

Weakness.

Brother.

_Fitz_.


	2. Vox

Today, the words are back under control.

Look, run, destination.

There's more noise, as he knew there would be. Loud noise, thumping. It doesn't matter, because his wrists are still tattered and he knows—has always known—that he must bleed for what he has done.

Locate, run, destination.

But he can't, he _can't_ compartmentalize the way he used to and _god _what is wrong with him?

weaknessbrotherfitzfriendsbuscoulsonrescuesimmonshomemayprotectorgarrettloyaldebt

skye.

Stop.

Look, run, destination.

Look, run, destination.

There is something wet on the edge of his forehead, and more noise—guards speaking, their footsteps (one heavyset, probably about thirty, the other thinner and taller, at least six-foot-three, the third lighter but just as tall, probably female, he thinks carelessly).

Look, run, destination.

It doesn't matter.

Look, run, destination.

There is a clatter, and someone's body falls to the floor. It's only after he feels cold pavement under his fragile wrists that Ward realizes he was the one who fell.

It doesn't matter.

"Sedate him," Coulson orders, and Ward looks up at him.

"Fancy seeing you here," he sneers sardonically, but his lips don't move and the words don't have any sound, and his hands are shaking again, shaking and shaking and shaking.

The world goes dark, but Grant Ward doesn't notice, not really.

That was what he was running toward the whole time, after all.

He wakes from sedation to Coulson, again.

"What. Do. You. Want." Coulson's tone leaves no room for pity.

Nothing?

Orders?

Silence?

"Ward," Coulson says impatiently, and for a fraction of a second his face is sad again—and why is it sad, why is anyone sad? This isn't sad, this is life—this is what happens to Grant Ward, and there is no solace and no pity and no change.

Ward?

Protector?

No.

He looks for his three words—_look_, that was one of them, he feels sure—but what were the rest? Run? Is he running? Why is he running? And what was the other?

He can't find them, and his hands are shaking, and why does his head feel so strange?

"_Ward_," Coulson snaps. "What the hell are you doing?"

Surviving, Ward thinks. Wait. No. Not surviving.

Dying?

Failing?

Following orders?

"Fitz survived your attempt on his life," Coulson says unexpectedly, and Ward feels his body jerk in response. Coulson's look is sharp, but he doesn't comment on it. "But you know that he will never be the same. Did you know that he can't even work in the lab anymore?"

Ward shakes his head.

I?

Didn't?

Mean?

To?

He didn't pull the trigger, he swears he didn't.

Maybe he would have, if he hadn't had the option to drop them in the lifeboat. Not that the lifeboat saved them, after all.

It was the same thing.

The same thing as a trigger pulled.

_Fitz_.

Someone in the hospital bed is retching, and Ward realizes there is vomit on his skin and his stomach is heaving and his hands, dear _god _they will not stop shaking.

Coulson narrows his eyes. "I don't know why I'm talking to you as if this is something that matters to you," he said unexpectedly, and Ward's eyes snapped up. "But Hydra has advanced science…and maybe they have something that could help Fitz. So I'm asking for two things: stop running into your cell walls, and start talking."

"I'll talk," Ward says, and his voice is odd and rusty and tired, scraping across the cold, white silence like a razor against wrists. "To Skye."


	3. Breathe

After that, he runs out of words.

What do you say? The words ran out of his body like blood.

No orders.

Nothing.

But time passes as it always does, and time heals, if only a little, and that long, unending ache from the place May fractured his larynx is not so sharp anymore.

Coulson came to visit him one day a week after his last attempt. "I need intel."

Ward lifted his head.

"I know that Garrett was the only thing in your life that motivated you," Coulson said sharply. "And I don't know if Fitz and Skye and Simmons will be motivators now. But they're in danger. And I need your help."

Help?

Skye?

"I'll speak to Skye," Ward said, his voice clearer than he thought it would ever be. "I'll give her intel. And I'll be honest with her."

"_Honest_?" Coulson scoffed. "Why should I believe that?"

"You do," Ward said, straightening and staring straight at Coulson for the first time in months. "You know I will."

"Why? What you will get out of it?"

_I'll be able to breathe_.

"I don't need anything," Ward said, his voice listless again. "Not anymore."

Coulson's face tightened, and he turned away without another word.

* * *

><p>Three weeks later, Skye walked into his cell and made the barrier between them invisible. Her face was hard, her muscles lean—she was different, sharper from training, bitter from experience—but there was a light in her eyes, fiercer now, but still unquenchable.<p>

And then the words he had been empty of for so long overwhelmed him, memories he had tried to shut out, thoughts he had tried not to think:

Games of battleship and no last name and a girl in a van whose dark eyes shone brighter than the noon sky and the first hand to reach out and touch him and not leave a bruise and a mind wired so drastically different from his that it always left him reeling and—a girl whose finger was too strong to pull a trigger. He wondered, briefly, if it still was.

"Well," he said softly. "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes?"


End file.
